in ictu oculi
by Tariel H
Summary: there's no going back to the people they were.
1. blink and you're gone

**A/N: Forgive any discrepancies, it's been a year since I've seen this show (and it's 2AM as I blast this out) but the pain of Carter's death rings clear to me. In which, Carter doesn't die, but things are broken all this same. (I can promise a happy ending, if I ever get there).**

* * *

It's like this.

Dying's never really what you think it'll be. (And Joss. Joss will remember it all, like clear cut glass, like the two puncture wounds for scars John will mouth over like prayers).

Dying's like this: the shattering clanging ring of a single, lonely tollbooth in the intermittedly quiet space of a city that's never silent. Or rather, the clattering, high pitched keel that never ends, even when you want it to. (Like the pain). It rings and it rings and it rings and it rings, and you—they— are helpless.

(this was never a story meant to have a happy ending).

It's this: the utter stillness. The way earth stops and draws breath under them, before swallowing them whole. Except, what about this is _still_ , the trembling of their bodies, torn and torn and torn asunder, again and again, with holes where there should be muscle and bones where there should be blood. What _stillness_ , well, certainly not in the tremble of his hands reaching, _reaching_ for the smooth slope of her cheek, the promise of salvation, of supplication.

(There was always a bullet meant for him. You don't make men like John Reese without contingencies. You don't make a man, mold him out of steel, without kryptonite. Living was never meant to be easy).

And Joss thinks, in the fogged brown haze of her mind, that _no, it's not at all_ like pain, not at all like the half of you that makes you human being savaged from your chest— as if she gets a choice in how she dies, as if any of us do.

The glass yellow street lights reflect off the damp ground, and if she could peel the look from his eyes, that dank desperation—

(The realization hits them then; as life is wont to teach you in its cruel barbaritiy, that sometimes your best isn't enough. He'd learned, he thought, after Jess, after everything, and there's nothing elegant in the stretch of his arms over her body. nothing elegant in the harsh cut of his jaw. That look in his eyes, like he can save her, makes her chest rattle and shudder all over again).

The hard pretty pearls of his eyes, not ever blank.

There's the glitter and smatter of blood, the echoing of his voice like a bombshell in her brain, and then she gasps, head breaking the surface, and she says, without meaning to,

"It hurts, John—" And she's thinking about the epidural, suddenly the one she didn't get for Taylor's birth, she's thinking of her small scrawny son (not even _this_ can hurt like that, the pushing of something from nothing, before: space, and after: a child, nothing hurts like your body being ripped in two)- what's the point in drugs for childbirth when you don't get them for motherhood, for being a solider; you don't get the drugs for forgetting the violence brought onto the innocent, the violent you're wont to see as a cop.

All you get is the satisfaction of knowing that you wake up the same person.

You _get_ to wake up—  
(but she won't)

Her sob echoes.

(She's dying. her grief; unstoppered. the pungency of the blood. his hands are so, so tight around her. his hands, warm and dry, under the light, under her chin, in her hair.

"Stay with me. Joss, speak to me. I can't loose you." As if he has a choice in letting her go. She's slipping away, in his arms, his face peeled up towards the vast black stretch of the sky.

"Joss-"

(I love you).

There's a pause, a breath, a rattle of her lungs.

Then, blessedly.  
Nothing.

(There is nothing, save a body and some blood, save a man and a women and enough grief to fill an ocean. There is nothing here, except the shell of a man and the Woman, the _Woman_ who was, is, everything).

There is nothing.

* * *

 _("If anything happens, I'll hate your forever."_

" _You're stuck with me, remember?" His voice, like gravel sliding down a mountain, like the crunch of a boot against bone.)_

It was never supposed to be like this.

 _there's no one I'd rather be with at the end._

 _._

 _._

 _._

(it was never supposed to be like this)

* * *

IImagine the scene, if you will:

Here in New York, (once home and yet, less so, now) here in a hospital ward. And our characters; featuring our boy (who really isn't a boy now, seeing as he's just morphed into a man, not by choice but by consequence of a mother with too brave a heart), and a man built like a tall lean bullet, another man with the hand on hiss cane trembling. That same inexplicable grief too, except for now, it's doubled, tripled, as grief is wont to do. Grief travels. Multiplies. Eats everything in its wake, as if it is enough.

(The thing about grief: how does not stop).

"She was always out saving everyone but me." The boy says. In anger, in pain, fists clenched in two. Face drawn, gaunt, too haunted a child, the gaping wound of his mother's absence like—what? A knife? A bullet? A jagged hole in his chest?

"It was for you," The man rasps, as if this is a consolation. And the look in the boy's eyes at that. Like he could kill.

(There's a break in the air, where John feels it before he before it, like he felt the two bullets land in the cavern of his chest and _knew_ was was next, _knew_ it was Carter _knew_ it was his heart and hers about to break. This is to say, it happens suddenly, but not without warning.

For Taylor, to his credit, is light on his feet. His fists are raised, eyes red with tears, but when he swings out, it is with all the control and precision in the world; knuckles slamming against the sharp lines of John's cheek so hard he doubles back.

The only reason it lands is because John allows it.

(The only reason he can throw that punch is because John taught him).

"Is this really what you want." says John, in the silence where Taylor cradles his hands and hides his shame and grief in the shadows cast in the corner, no question mark tacked at the end because John's suddenly distracted by how Carter's eyes stare up at him from Taylor's face.

The flash of hurt in the boy's eyes is a bullet all over. (Or rather, two more he should've taken). But the kid straightens his posture and juts out his chin. His lower lip wobbles, like he might hit John again, or burst into tears. Maybe a combination of both.

"You said you had her back." Taylor says, halting, his whole body trembling, because without warning the tectonic plates of his life are shifting under his feet and there's suddenly no place to fall, no one to catch you. His eyes are bright. "You said you'd protect her."

(this is the type of grief that sends men to madness).

"Because she _loved_ you." John closes his eyes. That hurts, more than it should, _hurts_ , just like he deserves.

"Taylor—"

"She loved you enough to die for. But what about me!?" And there it is, that violence tucked in his pain, anger so much easier to reach for than anything else. He is a child, left, grasping for straws, grasping into darkness.

"She didn't love me enough to keep living. But you—" Taylor begins to weep, deep gulping, rasping sobs that shake his chest. (John wants to die. He looks down at his hands, sees her blood, that blood on her face should've been his, he looks up, and sees the anguish etched in sharp tears that cut down Taylor's cheeks.

He's not sure if he can live with this.)

"I'm sorry."

"That's not enough."

"Then what is? What can I do—"

"You bring her back! You're fucking Superman- I believed in you like I believed in her-Bring her back." A pause. The torrent slows. John's breath comes faster in his chest.

"She was thinking of you to the end." John places his hands on the sides of Taylor's face. It is meant to be a comforting gesture. (He refuses to lose this last piece of her.)

"She was my _mother._ " This grief, spreading through his chest like wildfire, spilling out in hot torrents down his cheeks. He clings to the back of John's shirt. (He owes her this. Owns them, this). His back, like unslacked marble, his hands, cradling the back of Taylor's head. "She was my mother." John's arm is tense around Taylor's shoulder, but he does not let it fall.

"There's nothing any of us could have done."

"There's always something, always, _always._

* * *

(There's this.

Jocelyn Carter was dead for 2 minutes and 40 seconds, 180 seconds. She lived, and loved, and died, and lived again. This could be a miracle, or science, or maybe, everyone is too wrapped up in their _reliefguiltgrief_ to look a gift horse in the mouth).

This is what Joss sees, 12 days later, when she wakes (for good this time) Her son, who is older, somehow, and a man with hard pearls for eyes. But when he turns, and looks at her—it strips away.

(He is a boy, with blue eyes, his heart in his mouth. He is a man, bound to her.

This is what she sees when she wakes.  
(The one ones that ever really mattered).


	2. the shortest distance

What's worse than almost dying?  
(As if anything could be worse).  
Well— what happens next.

* * *

The gun in her hand feels the same as it did before. Her breath is steady. She is, as ever, a firm spot amid the universe. Even now.

(Especially now).

The shooting range is dark. So, so dark, the pitch black lighting giving the barest way only in the booth where she crams herself. The gun in her hand goes off and in the space where the bullet meets the paper, there is, blissfully, nothing.

(Simmons is a danger, and she's in protective custody. Taylor is somewhere safe, with Finch and Fusco and Shaw. And she is here, waiting. Waiting. It's easy enough to slip away, no one can fake a statement like the police. No one can bury bullets or bodies or themselves, like the police.

She has, at most, an hour, before they notice her missing. And by then she'll be back, as if she'd never left. An hour from now, she'll still be waiting, so she might as well live her life till then).

There are footsteps behind her, and the gait of them is familiar, the burn at the back of her neck where she knows she's being watched. Maybe it makes her feel safe. Maybe it did, once. He pulls up behind her, so near they're flush but not touching, and for all her preparation, she leans. His chest catching her.

Touching through the thin fabric of their clothes like the haven't since his arms where tucked round her like a vice (like he's keeping her alive by the sheer force of his will over the universe), since she'd laid prostate in her hospital bed and the brush of his thumb over her check was the most fleeting of things, concrete among the haze of pain and fluid and gauze.

Something goes dry at the back of her throat.

If she could play it out all over again, she'd still have done it. She'd take them all out, one by one, dismantled rotting, gangrene empire poling under her city. Put herself on the line, all over again, for something's are greater—and if she can save a few of them, she would've. She will. She puts herself on the line, and that's a choice, the _choice_ she gets to make.

He doesn't get to be angry for that).

"I need you safe, Joss." (That voice pitched low, like gravel, sliding. A low rumbling tide). The staccato pellet of her gun rings clear, and it hits. Dead on. His hand covers her, lowers the gun and the line of her jaw snaps shut, with his arm parallel to hers.

"My stance is good." She says, instead. There's no space to move from him, even if she wanted.

"Could always be better." And there it is, the fleeting touch, here on her arm, there on her back, so she stands a little straighter, and the breath that knots a little tighter in her chest since…then, eases.

His hand in on her wrist. Her pulse thrums, and that isn't a lie. But she doesn't need him to hold her steady. When she pulls the trigger, it's a little off center.

He thinks himself a number of awful, horrible, terrible things. And she, she has no regrets. The rot has been cut from her city, the head of the snake half sliced, sinking into shadows where they creep.

He steps back, lets her turn, moves the hearing protectors down from her neck, onto the shelf where Carter turns and presses herself. Her front to his. Even ground. The coolness of her eyes, the firm set of her mouth.

"I'd do it all again. No matter what you say, John." The hard thing must be done, and it will be, so help her god, if she has to do it herself.

He thinks himself unbearable, and yet. When she reaches, the flesh of him is warm, like she knew it was, and he leans, and in the distance where they meet—

The gunpowder scent of him mixes nicely with her perfume.

"Detective," he murmurs, so low she might've not heard it if her whole body wasn't in tune with his. They run these concentric circles around each other. This, the shortest distance; the point in which they meet.

(The danger is out there; the danger is real. The danger is him and her and what they might do to the world outside them).

"John—" and her mouth falls to the corner of his, lashes soft, wisping over her cheek (he is subsumed, in that motion, the half lids of her eyes measuring him in equal terms). He's taken his far share of liberties tonight, but her fingers find his collar, the curve of his cheek, the slit of her open mouth in half a gasp.

His hand, in her hair, soft on the shell curve of her ear and the tenderness of him, the wolf lean and bare and hungry, could make her weep. and the worst thing happens to words is when the go unsaid, she could say, " _It wasn't your fault_ ", he could say, " _You should've never been apart of this fight"._

But what consolation is that, with the blood in both their mouths. Some bridges are never meant to be crossed. (This is one of them). Somethings, better left dead, unsaid, dying, gone.

"He's coming after you."

"Not if I get to him first."

"Carter—"

"You call me Carter when you need something. Detective when you're pissed or playful. Joss when you—"

"When I _what_?" She doesn't flinch from the burning of his eyes. (She was an interrogator, once. She stands her ground, burns and burns and _burns_ too, more radiant than the sun. All the brighter for her resolve, that nearly got her killed, once).

"Don't mock me." It's suddenly hard to breathe. The line of his mouth is tight and drawn and her hand falls, from his, cold mist cooling around his mouth. He is so still. Eyes like a wounded deer.

There's not enough space to run from this, suddenly, this angry _thing_ that rears, she lived and died and lived again, " _you changed me_ " he said but still ran, and that, _that…_

"This is _serious_ , John, _"_ She says, and maybe it's about revenge, for the grief laden in her son's eyes. For the liquid guilt in John's. As if she'll break.

"When it comes to you," he says, so carefully, between gritted teeth, treading on eggshells (but she's a bomb ready to blow), "I am." Joss falls still, too. For a moment. (There it is. The problem).

"You nearly died." He says, slowly, and her laugh bounces with as edge, it's funny how he says it as if she's not aware, as if she's not here, alone in this range with a gun in her hand and a bandage on her chest and trauma bitten down in her cheek.

"I know, John. I _know_ ," There's a crack where her composure is should be, hand, on her chest, over where her heart beats, under white linen and antiseptic "So just, stop-"

"You don't get it, do you." John's voice is low and cold, eyes glistening with sharp intent.

"Right, I forgot. You're the only one allowed to sacrifice yourself. You're the _only_ one allowed to save people. Shit, I'm just a cop. What the hell do I know?"

"Carter-"

"Detective. Carter. Joss. Which do you want me to be, John? _Who_ would you like me to be?" Joss' laugh is humorless and strained and sharp, not meant to cut, but that's what it does it does, it hurts him, that bitter, timorous laugh cutting his skin as easily as would a knife. "Will it matter? Will you even stay this time, or when I turn my back will you run?"

"I left to track Simmons down."

"You left me." She says. Her hands are empty. And the space between them, she can't reach. "You left. Have I been _avenged_ to your satisfaction?" _Was it worth it?_

"It wasn't about you-"

"Then why are you here?"

"I don't know." She closes her eyes.

"I think you should leave." He wavers. Reaches, like he can make this whole. They always, always, tread in concentric lines, in circles, round each other. For the first time, she flinches.

(She's tired, now. Not proud, but tired, and that should be something that's allowed, after it all).

She never imagined it'd go like this.

That they could hurt each other for real. That when he turned his back, she'd be the one to walk away and not look twice.

But they do.  
And she doesn't.


End file.
